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Guevara Convention Sound Out

Dave Watts from Fun^Da^Mental had a great idea a few months ago that is now seriously taking shape. It links up with stuff I am into re Che, but takes it to another level, as they say. Dave has a blogspot site now at Earconditioning – which you will agree is another in a long line of great FDM semantic reworkings (remember the phrase ‘Global Sweatbox’?). Dave writes:

“…The past week also brought communication with John Hutnyk.He´s a professor at Goldsmith´s University, and participated in one of the talks at the Clandestino Festival in Gothenborg where Aki (yes, the notorious terrorist-apologist Aki Nawaz) and I dropped a Fun´da´Mental DJ set a few years ago. John has twice invited me to talk with his students about the politics and presentation of Fun-da-mental videos. Coming back to last week, John and I were discussing this idea of a compilation that has been sitting in my brain for the last couple years. This year is the 40th anniversary of the death of Ernesto ´Che´ Guevara, and I wanted to compile an album of contemporary artists who have felt touched by revolutionary spirit, thought, actions, etc. The idea is not for all the music to focus on ´Che´ himself, but for expression of whatever the contributing artists feel regarding being subject to living on their knees for the sake of ´The Man´or ´System´. John has came up with a phrase which I immediately responded, “That should be the title!” So, we are going with “The Guevara Convention”.

Emails have been sent out to collegues, friends, associates etc. and so far the response has been good…we have Dj/Rupture, Filestine, Coldcut, Fermin Murguza, Fun-da-mental, Las Ratas, DJ Klandestino, Dr. Das, Shaheen (former Prophets of da City producer and vocalist) and IR, saying ´yeah´ musically. Cecilia Parsberg http://this.is/parsberg/ put me in touch with a woman from Uruguay who was 14 years old when Che was killed. She became active in the Marxist Tupac Amaru group in Uruguay. She has said she´ll provide some words for the text, really looking forward to reading what she has to say.

fyi: The following link is for the animation that Cecilia and co-conspiritors put together about the Israeli occupation and for which they asked me to provide a soundtrack.http://this.is/TheWall/

Javi Jiminez, a teacher and music writer here in Tenerife has also come on board, so we are moving. All we need now, are a few more artists and a label, distributor. The potential for this is huge. Oh, I must say, inspiration for this album also came about through an album that Fun-da-Mental soundman Bernard Maiquez lent me several years ago, El Che Vive!, (Last Call Records) which was released to coincide with the 30th anniversary of ´Che´´s death. I ended my first DJ stint in Tenerife (an AntiWar night at the original Cafeoteca de Arte in Puerto de la Cruz/2003) with the classic ´Hasta Siempre´ by Carlos Puebla y sus Tradicionales, from the aforementioned album, and the place erupted….everybody sang along! My girlfiend´s mum knows the song, kids know the song….so a chord was struck! If you got something for this project, please bring it. More as it happens….”

So I would say without doubt this is the best form the Guevara Convention could take. As discussed here, there is a lot at stake in these days to the terror-spectacle. Hope it comes together – look out for it in September.